Tiger Woods frustrated at Arnold Palmer Invitational

iger Woods’s scorecard on Saturday night told but a fraction of the story. His
third-round 71 at the Arnold Palmer Invitational was majestic yet maddening,
crystallising the turbulence of his past 2½ years into 18 chaotic holes.

Somehow he contrived to hit a three-wood at the 12th 260 yards out of a fairway bunker, and yet three holes later snap-hooked a drive so far left that the ball ended up in a Bay Hill resident’s garden. Clearly this was what Hank Haney, the coach publishing a tell-all memoir on Woods on Tuesday, meant by “The Big Miss”.

The round combined the dominance of old with the fragility of Woods’s more recent past. At one stage he led by four, displaying the formidable front-running that had brought him six titles at Bay Hill, but faltered in the closing stretch to allow Northern Ireland’s Graeme McDowell to cut the margin to one. The late wobble has left Woods with a vital test to pass, as he seeks to register his first official tournament victory since late 2009, when his world imploded amid shame and scandal.

Do not doubt that he is in the form to make the breakthrough. Here in central Florida, he has muscled back into contention, sizing himself up for a fifth Masters green jacket next month with a rejuvenated performance. Throughout three rounds in which his moments of brilliance have far surpassed his error count, he has struck 42 of 54 greens in regulation and projected an aura of eerie certainty.

Woods, at 11 under par, dismissed the suggestion that he had missed an opportunity in letting slip his four-shot advantage, snapping: “I’ve still got the lead.”

Woods appeared loath to acknowledge just how significant this tournament has become in the context of his restoration. While he celebrated his triumph in last December’s Chevron World Challenge as a long-overdue win, that event involved only an 18-man field and was not sanctioned by any major tour.

“I’m excited,” said Woods, who disclosed that a woman had shouted out on his backswing when he miscued his tee-shot at the 15th so badly. “I’ve played well to get here. It’s not like I’m slashing it all over the place and happened to be at 11 under. If you’re 11 under, you have done some good things. That’s how I’ve always looked at it. It’s a nice position to be in.”

The statistics are emphatically in his favour. On 48 of the 52 occasions when Woods has held the 54-hole lead on the PGA Tour, he has gone on to lift the trophy. But the new model Tiger does not yet have the luxury of those certainties. The last time he found himself in charge after three rounds, in Abu Dhabi in January, he lost to Robert Rock.

McDowell is more than ready to assume the Rock role in sabotaging Woods’s coronation tonight. After all, the Ulsterman has stared down Woods once before, edging out the 14-time major champion in a play-off at the Chevron in 2010.

“There’s a fair bit of expectation on Tiger – he’s looking to complete the comeback,” he said. “But I’m not going to change my approach in any way. I’ve played enough with Tiger to know what’s going on.”

Woods also confronts other pursuers with a point to prove – not least Ernie Els, who can belatedly book a place at the Masters if he finishes at least second tonight, and Ian Poulter, with an appetite sharpened by Haney’s revelation that Woods once described the Englishman as a “d---”.

Colin Montgomerie has perhaps the most telling line on Woods’s chances on Sunday. After Woods sealed the first of his six Bay Hill wins, in 2000, the Scot reflected: “I think the view in the locker room, without saying it out loud, was that the tournament was finished. It was who was going to finish second, really. And it turned out like that.”

Not for nothing does Woods target this tournament, still hosted by Arnold Palmer at the age of 82, as a crucial phase in mobilising for the Masters. Having lived in Orlando for 15 years, before moving to Jupiter Island near Miami in the wake of his divorce, he understands the vagaries of the Bay Hill course as intimately as he does those of Augusta.

“Fortunately, I have had a few places where I have felt comfortable and played well,” Woods said. “This is one of them. For some reason, I just understand how to play it.”

Do not forget, either, that in each of the four years Woods has won the Masters, he has also won the tournament directly beforehand. This is a pivotal moment.

As Woods strode around Bay Hill, striping almost every shot with impressive purity, you could see what he meant about his affection for this place.

A fortnight ago, when he limped away from the Cadillac Championship with an Achilles complaint, we had wondered if he would even be at the Masters. But in this mood, and in this poise, the talk was only of him winning it.